Steve Frech - Deadly Games

“Yeah. I still owe you.” I tip the bucket over in my hand. A mass of coins slides into my palm and I deposit it into my pocket. “I’ll keep the change.”

I really do owe her and I’ll still get my credit card tips for tonight. Besides, I love taking the change. I keep it in a jar on my dresser. Every month or so, I’ll cash it in. It’s usually a couple hundred bucks and I treat it like that ten-dollar bill you find in your jacket pocket at the beginning of autumn. I’ll go out for a steak dinner or take a day trip to Napa.

“Thanks,” she says, placing the bills in her personal check presenter, which is already stuffed with slips of paper.

“How many numbers you stack?” I ask.

We each have our own check presenter where we keep our change, credit card receipts, cash, order pad. A bartender never wants to leave their check presenter behind. It’s also where we keep the phone numbers customers give us. Katie and I have our own little rivalry. We call it “Stacking Numbers”. At the end of the night, we’ll see who got more phone numbers. It’s always Katie, to the point that I have a “ten-phone-number” handicap.

“You don’t want to know,” she replies, confidently.

“I would like to know who you’re having dirty sex time with tonight.”

She tuts her tongue at me and takes my hand. “Oh, Clay. Are you jealous?”

“Hey, don’t worry about me. I’m having my fun.”

“Yeah,” she says, sadly. “But it’s not with me, is it?”

I snatch my hand away. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” She laughs and gives me a knowing wink.

“Then get out of here before I do.”

She hops off the stool and heads for the door. “Good night, Tommy!”

“Good night, Katie!” he replies, bent over the mop.

“Good night, Clay!”

“Good night, Worst Person in the World!”

She stops in the door, turns, and blows me a kiss. I grudgingly return the gesture. She “catches” it, slaps it on her backside, and heads out into the street.

“You two are a walking lawsuit.”

I spin around to see Alex standing at the end of the bar.

“You ready?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go,” he says, popping my drawer and running the sales report.

I grab the drawer and follow him into the office.

Alex sits at his computer, working on the inventory while I count my drawer.

I quickly make sure that the amount in the drawer is the same as when I started, minus my sales and credit card tips.

“I’m dropping four-hundred-twelve dollars and sixty-two cents and my credit card tips are two-seventy-four-eighty,” I announce and hold the drawer out to Alex.

“Give me a sec,” he says, slowly pecking away on the keyboard.

I keep the drawer right where it is, hovering near his face, and don’t say a word.

Unable to ignore it any longer, he looks at me. “You got somewhere to be?”

“Maybe. And she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

He snatches the drawer. “I don’t want to know.”

He double checks my figures and counts the money.

“Perfect, as always,” he says, signing my drop slip. “Get out of here and do whatever it is you need to do.”

I pop out of my chair and head for the door. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t resist getting one last dig before I go.

“I’ll tell her you said ‘hi’.”

He jams his fingers into his ears. “La-la-la-la-can’t-hear-you-la-la-la-don’t-want-to-know-la-la-la.”

“Have a good night!” I shout as I exit the office.

A couple minutes later, I’m driving past the gazebo in the town square, which is festooned with lights, as I head towards to the ocean. I’m already anticipating the sex that is mere minutes away.

Emily and I have been seeing each other for months and it hasn’t lost any of its shine. It’s fun, thrilling, and a challenge in its own way. It’s almost entirely physical. That’s not to say that I don’t care about her. I do, but we’ve laid our cards on the table and “love” was not one of them. We are fine with it.

I didn’t even know that she was married the first time it happened. She conveniently forgot to mention it. She came into the bar by herself, we flirted all night, and ended up in bed together. It was fun and I thought it was a casual, one-night stand.

Then, a few nights later, she came into The Gryphon with her husband. They were a total physical mismatch. She was stunning, sensual. He was a short, thin, balding man. He was also arrogant, demanding, and eager to show her off. To put it another way, he was that stereotypical short, incredibly insecure guy with a massive chip on his shoulder, but as a hedge fund manager, he possessed the one asset that levelled the playing field: money. For Emily’s part, she was bored.

I was speechless.

She and I kept exchanging glances while he would speak too loudly about his business deals in an attempt to impress those around him, many of whom were also millionaires and didn’t care for his grandstanding.

At one point, he theatrically announced that he was stepping outside to take a phone call about a “billion-dollar project”. After our shared glances, I took the opportunity to approach her.

“So, who exactly is that?” I asked.

“My husband,” she casually remarked.

“You didn’t tell me you were married.”

“You didn’t ask.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. You’re not in danger of breaking up a happy family or anything. There’s no kids. We’re only married in a legal sense.”

“Isn’t that kind of the only sense that matters?”

“Do you regret the other night?”

My hesitation was all the answer she needed.

“Good,” she said with a look that intimated we were just getting started.

I liked her little game. I liked her confidence. I liked her.

Just then, her husband re-entered the bar with a swagger and a sense of self-congratulation that was almost comical. He ordered a round of shots for the bar in celebration of the deal he had just closed. I was pretty sure he was lying but he paid the exorbitant tab and insisted that Katie and I join in by taking a shot. We were more than happy to oblige. Emily and I locked eyes as we took our shot.

In that moment, I knew that what I had thought was a one-night stand was far from over.

When they closed out their tab, I thanked them, saying I hoped they would be back soon, all the while keeping my eyes on her.

A week later, she did come back, sans husband.

“No date, tonight?” I asked as she settled into the bar, surprised at how happy I was to see her.

“Nope.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Isn’t it? I’m so distraught. I’m going to be so lonely.”

“Tragic.” I nodded. “Well, I suppose I can keep you company if you don’t mind me working for a bit.”

She gave me a hungry look from head to toe. “Not at all.”

She and I continued our parries and jabs of innuendo all night.

When I got off work, we went back to her place. Her husband was in San Francisco at some conference, so we had sex on his prized pool table. I was in a little bit of a dry spell, but from our two encounters, it was obvious that she had been starved for a long time.

Ever since then, we had seized every opportunity offered to us.

I turn right onto Kensington, which runs along the beach, and will take me right to the Seaside Motel. If I had kept going straight instead of turning, I would have eventually reached the Parker house.

When we first started sleeping together, that’s exactly what I would have done, but not anymore. We’ve stopped meeting there. We had been on a mission to break in every room in the house while her husband was away. It was fantastic. We’d have sex, and afterwards I’d walk naked out of their bedroom onto the massive balcony, which was cantilevered out over the sea, and marvel at the view. Then, I’d go back inside and we’d have sex in another room. I would spend the night. We’d fall asleep around eight in the morning. I’d wake up and leave from her place to go to work in the afternoon with a flushed glow and receive looks of scorn from Katie and Alex. Alex knew I was seeing someone but he didn’t know who. Katie figured it out because she had seen us flirting at the bar multiple times.